Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Childe Hassam, a successful young book and magazine illustrator, made his first trip abroad in 1883, disembarking in Great Britain then making a wide sweep through France, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain. The sheaf of European subjects he brought back became the basis for an exhibition of his watercolors at Boston’s Williams & Everett Gallery in 1884.Hassam showed 67 watercolors of European subjects in the 1884 exhibition Water Colors by Hassam, held at Williams & Everett Gallery, Boston. The complete checklist of titles is included in the appendix “Exhibitions in Hassam’s Lifetime” in H. Barbara Weinberg’s Childe Hassam, American Impressionist (New York, New Haven, and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004). That same year, Hassam married Kathleen Maude Doan and moved to an apartment building on Columbus Avenue in the recently developed Back Bay area of Boston.Hassam’s discovery of urban Boston is discussed by Erica E. Hirshler in “Childe Hassam: At Dusk, Boston Common at Twilight” (Boston: MFA Publications, 2015). Hassam’s Boston paintings are also discussed by Stephanie L. Herdrich, “Hassam in Boston, 1859–1886,” in Weinberg, 2004, 29–51; and by Jennifer A. Martin Bienenstock, “Childe Hassam’s Early Boston Cityscapes,” Arts Magazine 55 (Nov. 1980), 168–171. His interest in his new surroundings was revealed in 1885, when he submitted watercolors with titles such as <em>In the Public Garden</em> and <em>Springtime in the City</em> to exhibitions in Boston. In the Public Garden was exhibited at the Boston Art Club, 32nd Exhibition, Water Colors, Black and White Drawings, and Sculpture, April 11–May 2, 1885, no. 129. Springtime in the City was shown at the Boston Water-Color Society, 1st Exhibition, from December 1, 1885, no. 1. Neither watercolor has been indisputably identified with a known work, leaving open the possibility that one of these titles might refer to RISD’s painting. Keen to establish his American reputation as a painter, Hassam selected glimpses of modern life to attract the attention of critics, not only through location but through refined technique and finish.See, for example, the large watercolor on paper The Public Garden (Boston Common), 1885, Slavin Collection, fig. 41 in Weinberg, 2004, 47. On page 16 of Childe Hassam: American Impressionist (Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1994), Ulrich W. Hiesinger notes the improvement of Hassam’s figural style after 1883, when he took life painting classes at the Boston Art Club. One of his instructors there, the Italian painter Tommaso Juglaris, had trained in Paris with Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. As an illustrator, Hassam had become an astute observer of the world around him, equally capable of capturing effects of nature as representing women in fashionable attire. Both these elements are included in <em>Woman and Mastiff in the Boston Public Garden</em>, a watercolor whose urban immediacy is enhanced by an audacious canine presence. The young woman has a firm hold on the collar of her trusty companion as they pause and gaze upward, as if fixed on a bird beyond the range of the composition. While the model’s pose might have originated in the studio, the inclusion of the dog appears fresh and original, suggesting the inspiration of Velasquez, whose paintings of mastiffs Hassam could have seen at the Prado.Velasquez’s importance to 19th-century European and American artists is widely acknowledged. Las Meniñas (1656), in which a mastiff is featured, would have been a highlight of Hassam’s 1883 visit to the Prado. He would also have seen a painting of a dwarf with a mastiff that was then considered to be a work by Velazquez, and was copied by numerous artists, including John Singer Sargent. During the winter Hassam often transcribed nature from his window or from inside a carriage, but in spring and summer he could comfortably work outdoors, openly observing city life and abandoning a palette of grays and russets for the close hue contrasts of blues and greens.Hassam described sketching his early street scenes from his window or from inside a cab in an interview with A. E. Ives, “Talks with Artists: Mr. Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes,” Art Amateur 27 (Oct. 1892), 116–17. The accuracy of the park’s topography, the hazy foliage below the rooftops on Beacon Hill, and the activity of the gardener who transplants a flowerbed attest to Hassam’s direct observation of this setting. The strolling female figure was an important trope for painters of modern life, both in Paris and in Boston, and appealed to collectors;By the late 1870s, this subject was already a particular preference of American collectors of paintings by Giuseppe De Nittis, Jean Beraud, Giovanni Boldini, and Jean-Francois Raffaelli. Hassam shared that interest and emphasized the respectability of his city’s parks. In 1885 he made a series of illustrations for <em>A New Departure for Girls</em>, a book by the popular author Margaret Sidney.Margaret Sidney (Mrs. Harriet Mulford Stone Lothrop), A New Departure for Girls (Boston: D. Lothrop and Co., 1886). In this inspirational novel, the protagonist sets out to seek work and finds herself on a path that curves around the lagoon in the Public Garden. (Fig. 1) “A Garden in the city’s midst!” she exclaims, describing it as a place more energizing than rural nature—still and peaceful but “responding to healthy longings for activity.”Sidney, 1886, 47–48. As in RISD’s watercolor, this view shows the garden’s suspension bridge in the background, but the stroller’s excursion takes place on the opposite side of the lagoon, with the clock tower of the old Providence-Boston train station prominent against the sky. A skilled “black-and-white man,” Hassam most likely made this version as a monochromatic painting that in turn would have been cut onto a wooden block by professional line engravers. Illustrators who provided pen-and-ink drawings and monochromatic paintings to publishers were called “black-and-white men.” Their images were then cut into hardwood printing blocks by expert line men who often added their names to the artist’s signature. John Schoelch and George L. Cowee engraved the blocks for A New Departure for Girls. Hassam’s ability to interpret the atmospheric effects of nature is perhaps most evident in the many paintings he made of the rocky coves of the Isles of Shoals, located off the coast of New Hampshire’s border with Maine. Through his friendship with the poet Celia Thaxter, Hassam became a frequent summer visitor to the island of Appledore, where Thaxter’s home served as a gathering place for artists.Hassam’s 1884 drawing of figures on a sandy beach was published as a woodcut illustration for Thaxter’s 1886 collection of poems, Idyls and Pastorals. Although the date of his first visit to Appledore is not certain, his friendship with Thaxter began in the early 1880s. See Curry, 1990, 33 and 195, n. 62. Around 1888 Hassam built a studio on Appledore, and in the ensuing summers applied his brush to recreating impressions of the flowers that filled Thaxter’s gardens and home.David Park Curry thoughtfully examines Hassam’s seascapes in the chapter “The Rocks of Appledore,” in Curry, 1990, 115–89. He dates the construction of Hassam’s studio to ca. 1888, relating it to the flurry of construction undertaken by Thaxter’s family, the Laightons, who were owners of the Appledore House hotel (Curry, 1990, 38). After a period of absence in the late 1890s, Hassam returned to Appledore regularly until around 1916. His noteworthy collaboration with Thaxter, an illustrated book entitled <em>An Island Garden</em>, appeared in 1894, the year of the writer’s death. The heightened optical perception and skill apparent in his watercolors for the book revealed an intense and personal awareness of nature that flourished in this environment. When he returned to Appledore in the late 1890s, he brought his maturity and concentration to a study of the island’s more abstract geological beauty, and initiated a series of paintings of its coastal ledges and inlets. Sketching on site, Hassam drew <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em> on July 23, 1907, from a spot on the southwest side of the island where he also painted in oil.Curry specifies the location of Diamond Cove (1990, 162) and illustrates the RISD drawing (pl. 78). He made the sketch in black pencil and colored chalks on the inside of a stiff paper folder bearing the monogram and address of Augustus H. Tennis of New York City.The monogram appears as “AHT” above “Augustus H. Tennis / 47 East Nineteenth Street / New York.” Tennis was an agent for the Howe Machine Company, and the folder may have housed pages of a trade catalogue. It originally bore a sticker for a card and millboard manufacturer: E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs Co. 169 W. 57th Street N.Y. The impression of the monogram is visible in the cliffs at the left of the drawing. The vertical crease of the booklet cover, which is pricked where it had been sewn, is also evident. Hassam trimmed the left edge of the opened cover, so the crease does not fall at the center of the composition. An oil painting of this view, entitled <em>Isles of Shoals</em>, was also completed in 1907.See Curry, pl. 79, Isles of Shoals, 1907, oil on canvas, 26 x 31 in., Portland Art Museum, Oregon Art Institute. A related painting, dated the following year, is reproduced in Curry, pl. 80, Diamond Cove, Isles of Shoals, 1908, oil on panel, 25 x 30 in., Gallery of Art, Washington University, St. Louis. In graphite and black chalk, Hassam mapped out the drawing’s composition, devising a reverse S-curve to lead the eye from the transparent waters of the cove to the rugged contours of the cliffs. He sketched the cliff walls and recesses with a close up-and-down stroke, connecting them with a line that concludes in an anchoring scribble at lower left. The rocky mass ascends to the top of the sheet where it is intersected by a sliver of the mainland, just visible on horizon. Allowing the buff color of the paper to suggest the earthy tints of the rocks, Hassam applied a palette of blues and yellow-greens to represent the lively movement of light on the water and the growth of algae on the cliffs. He used white chalk to heighten the reflected brilliance of their rocky surfaces and to pick out stones in the shallow water near the shore. A comparison of <em>Diamond Cove, Appledore</em>, with the related oil painting of this site reveals Hassam’s full grasp of his subject in its preliminary stages. The drawing contains the complete armature for the larger composition, from the slender ribbon of sky to the foreground’s rocky perch. On Appledore Hassam drew from life, recreating—even in a quick sketch—the visual experiences that were among the richest and most meaningful of his career. <em>Maureen O’Brien Curator of Painting and Sculpture</em> ', 'en') (Line: 118) Drupal\filter\Element\ProcessedText::preRenderText(Array) call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 111) Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->doTrustedCallback(Array, Array, 'Render #pre_render callbacks must be methods of a class that implements \Drupal\Core\Security\TrustedCallbackInterface or be an anonymous function. The callback was %s. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->getLinkInstances('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 116) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->replaceCallback(Array) preg_replace_callback('|]*)>(.*?)|s', Array, 'Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. ') (Line: 123) Drupal\footnotes\Plugin\Filter\FootnotesFilter->process('Agrippina the Younger watches as men of the emperor move nearer and nearer to her. They carry weapons. Having survived one attempt on her life, she knows that she will not survive another. One man knocks her over the head with a club and another raises his sword. With her last breath, she implores her killers to strike through her womb— the womb that birthed Nero, her matricidal son. <em>The Remorse of Nero After Killing his Mother</em> by John William Waterhouse Public domain, source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/john-william-waterhouse/the-remorse-of-nero-after-the- murder-of-his-mother-1878, in which Nero realizes that maybe killing his mother 1 wasn’t a nice thing to do. Image courtesy of The Victorian Web This account of Agrippina’s death, corroborated by several ancient historians but likelyC.f., Tacitus 14; Dio 12.12-14. embellished, previews the difficulties we will face in exploring Agrippina in the historical record. Why does Agrippina asked to be stabbed through the womb? Yes, she birthed Nero, but could her last plea also represent a Lady Macbeth-esque desire to unsex herself—a metonymic exhortation to destroy that which made her a woman? Is this question of any import to her portrait at the RISD Museum? Turning first to how contemporary revisionist historians have begun to view earlier historians of Agrippina, I will then look at the role of Agrippina’s portrait as a living cultural artifact inextricably linked with certain changes in the historical reception of Agrippina. Agrippina the Younger (15–59 CE) was closely connected to the first five Roman emperors: she was great-granddaughter of Augustus, great-niece and adoptive granddaughter of Tiberius, sister of Caligula, niece and fourth wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero. Beyond her noble status, Agrippina demanded “real and official power” and not mere “influence.” That Agrippina faces a hostile historical record isImperial Women 259. beyond debate and related to her demands for this sort of power. Since Suetonius andIbid; I, Claudia 62. Tacitus, she has been characterized as bloodthirsty, overly ambitious, sexually flagrant, and unfeminine; and accused of crimes from murder to incest.Imperial Women, 1. Susan Wood, who has written much on Agrippina the Younger and other Roman women, traces this hostile historical record, above all else, to Agrippina’s encroachment on traditionally male privileges, and colorfully points to prejudices and inaccuracies in many of the accusations against her. I would like to focus first on Wood’s assertionImperial Women 259. that the frequency that powerful and intelligent woman faced nearly identical accusations renders them suspect. Such depictions of these women, which still abound in AmericanImperial Women 262 politics today, stem from actual misogyny or a desire to use a stereotype as an easy rhetorical shortcut. Second, Wood holds that the structure of Roman society encouraged its women to act indirectly. Direct avenues of holding power were closed off to women and thus, if they wanted to exercise power, they were forced to pursue “devious and manipulative forms of behavior.” While not exonerating Agrippina from all blame— even the most revisionist of historians agree that she was still guilty of many crimes— we should look critically on accusations against her, in particular those that follow a predictable pattern. Understanding Agrippina’s legacy in the contemporary historical debate prepares us to more fully appreciate the RISD Museum's portrait of Agrippina, its role (or roles) in this muddled historical record, and what it means to the viewer today. Since the move away from more realistic representations under Augustus, Roman portraiture began to be used as a tool for communicating ideologies.www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm What sort of ideology does Agrippina’s portrait communicate? First of all, we must ask who commissioned the statue, and thus who was doing the communicating. We can’t be sure that Agrippina commissioned the statue, or when in her life it would have been commissioned. Museum records date the piece to circa 40 CE. If dated before Caligula’s death, it could have been commissioned by Caligula himself. In this case, the statue would have acted as part of Caligula’s plan to elevate Agrippina, Drusilla, and his other sisters.. Through this Cult of Drusilla, Caligula sought to set up his sisters as objects of veneration in order to cement his own rule and power.Barrett 225; “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula”. They were invoked with Caligula in public oaths and, together with Antonia the Younger, were the first to be granted privileges normally accorded to the Vestal Virgins.Behen 62 We can see an example of such a depiction on the backside of the coin belowBarret 225; Source of image: http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1800.html: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caligula_sestertius_RIC_33_680999.jpg">Sestertius from rule of Caligula. Front: Germanicus; Back: Agrippina the Younger and her sisters.</a> However, if we suppose that the statue was commissioned by Agrippina, the function is altered and Agrippina is the one in control of manipulating her own image. This portrait and other commissioned by Agrippina can as Curator of Ancient Art Gina Borromeo writes, “give us an idea of how she wished to be portrayed.”Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” Given that Agrippina’ autobiography was destroyed,Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” this piece might be able to grant us invaluable insight into understanding a figure so prejudiced by the historical record, as she herself wished to be perceived. In any case, one should be no less critical here than with the rest of the historical record, and we can only suggest this as one possible interpretation. Presuming that Agrippina commissioned the portrait, it seems unlikely that it was when Agrippina’s power was most threatened. From late 39 to January 41, she was exiled by her brother Caligula. It might be the case that this statue was a part of an effort by Agrippina to reconsolidate her power upon returning from exile. It is interesting to entertain the idea that this might be from a year as late as 49 — after she married Claudius and become empress but that seems unlikely, as other statues we have from that period display evidence of an imperial diadem.Behen 63. The idea that Agrippina commissioned the portrait can be supported with close inspection. The portrait seems to depart from the faceless, unassuming Vestal Virgin of the sestertius minted under Caligula. She does not ask us to idealize her as some feminine standard of beauty; rather, she presents herself as “rather jowly” with “heavy features” and a “large nose,”Barrett 225. and there is a “certain asymmetry in her features” and especially the nose.Ridgway 201. This could be a response to gossip that circulated against her, as a woman and of which she might have had some awareness. As contemporary biographer Anthony A. Barrett observes, her attractiveness is not a “trivial issue” when historians such as Tacitus claimed that she was a “beautiful woman” who used her “physical charms to ensnare a defenseless Claudius, among others.”Barrett 225. Agrippina looks determined, fearless, and perhaps even disdainful. The severe eyebrows extend horizontally to the hairline and dislocate the forehead, and elevate the corner of the brows in a way that lend force to this expression.Ridgway 201. Running parallel from a center part, the tresses of hair becomes tighter as it moves towards the ears.Ibid. This style possibly evokes, as it does in other portraits of her,Behen 63. that of Agrippina’s mother who was also politically powerful and suffered exile. The allusion to her mother’s hairstyle would have presumably been more apparent to those who lived in Rome who grew up around representations of Agrippina the Elder. In drawing comparison to her mother, Agrippina the Younger insists on her noble lineage and right to wield authority, even as a woman; she anticipates the future power that she would one day hold and had pretensions of holding and legitimizes her right to that power by invocation. Similarly her protruding upper lip and small chin recall depictions of her brother Caligula, Behen 62. and these resemblances seek to further highlight her dynastic right to rule. The bust of the statue—including the taupe tunic, green mantle, and socle (or simple pedestal)—is not ancient but likely from the 18th century and parallels other portraits we have from this era.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” In addition to this theory, this article also contains a more detailed treatment of the 18th century additions. What does the addition say about 18th century tastes and perceptions of this portrait, and the larger question of how historical forces can shape perceptions of an object? To begin to answer these questions, one must first understand 18th century restoration practices. Often broken statutes were mended with new creations (for another example, the RISD Museum’s <em>Figure in the Guise of Hermes</em>; both the ancient body and removed leg of 18th century origin can be viewed in the Ancient Art Gallery). The addition of the bust in the case of the Agrippina perhaps was responding to a need to more easily display the piece and a perceived lack of color. The RISD Museum acquired the piece from a Marchioness of Linlithgow and before that it was probably proudly exhibited by many other wealthy individuals. Here these individuals used this piece in a similar manner to how we guessed Agrippina might have—to highlight nobility and power. These perceived deficiencies unawarely hit on the part that the portrait played in antiquity. As Borromeo elucidates, ancient statues of white marble were typically painted in vivid colors, thus this 18th century addition incidentally gives the contemporary museumgoer some indication of the effect that color would have added.Borromeo, “Looking an Empress in the Eye.” While this proves to be an interesting historical coincidence, one would err to imagine that this negates the history of this object and reverts it to some earlier form; rather, these additions present a visual manifestation of how viewers of different periods can bring something of their own age to a work, so as to inscribe new meaning and shed light on aspects that have long laid dormant. As the literary critic and theorist Stephen Greenblatt states, “Cultural artifacts do not stay still, . . . they exist in time, and . . . they are bound up with personal and institutional conflicts, negotiations, and appropriations.” One would be remiss to see Agrippina’s portrait at the RISD Museum and assume its significance was locked up in Imperial Rome. Commenting on the legacy of Agrippina, Barrett questions whether she was ever able to escape a “devastating ‘image’ problem.”Barrett 225. Like Wood, he views her manipulation as necessary—although not excusable—in the misogynistic culture that she faced. Successful manipulation was not only a matter of publicity but also of life and death. She excelled in this manipulation as the wife of Claudius but “tragically failed” as the life of Nero, leading to the death described at the beginning of this essay. In her own time, Barrett concludes, “She did not change the hardened attitude of her contemporaries, but she did define what Romans were willing to tolerate.” In a similar way, her portrait measures what the people of various ages are willing to tolerate, and mirrors and even influences social and cultural processes. The recent revisionist work of historians such as Wood and Barrett opens up to us new hermeneutic possibilities that reflect larger developments and processes of our times. On the other hand, we should avoid presenting our own age as superior. As media coverage of the 2016 American presidential election reminds us, it is all too easy to let misleading tropes color perception. Although it cannot be said that, when it comes to attitudes about women, American society is fully beyond the hardened attitudes of Imperial Rome, examining how other ages received Agrippina and her portrait can alert us to systemic flaws in our own thought processes. Bibliography Behen, Michael J., in Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson, eds. I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome (New Haven, 1996), 62-63. Barrett, Anthony. Agrippina. Florence, US: Routledge, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 May 2016. Borromeo, Gina. “Looking an Empress in the Eye,” RISD Museum Manual. Web. May 2016 Clark, A. M., “An Agrippina,” Bulletin of the Rhode Island School of Design, Museum Notes 44 (May 1958) 3–5, 10. Ridgway, Brunilde S., Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Classical Sculpture (Providence, 1972) 86–87, 201–204. Trentinella, Rosemarie. “Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/toah/ hd/ropo2/hd_ropo2.htm (October 2003) Wood, Susan E., “Diva Drusilla Panthea and the Sisters of Caligula,” American Journal of Archaeology 99 (1995): 457–82. Wood, Susan E., Imperial Women: A Study in Public Images, 40 BC–AD 68 (Boston, 1999), with earlier references. 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