Joseph Gallivan interviews Dawson Carr, about Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece

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Joseph Gallivan interviews Dawson Carr, about Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece

On Tuesday April 25, 2015, Joseph Gallivan interviews Dawson Carr, about Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece, which is on display at the Portland Art Museum through July 9, 2017.

Exhibition curator Carr is the Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art at the museum, and he will talk about how the work ended up in America, who painted the missing panel, and what computer techniques were used to age it so it fit in.

This show was recorded at KBOO on April 15, 2017, in Studio 3.

From the press release:

Reunited: Francescuccio Ghissi’s St. John Altarpiece

 

 

Portland Art  Museum presents

full 14th century altarpiece, completed through a collaboration among conservators, curators, and mathematicians

PORTLAND, Ore.

The Portland Art Museum is pleased to present an exhibition

that brings together eight dispersed 14t century

paintings, and a recreated missing

panel, so that the altarpiece can be seen and appreciated as one magnificent work of art. This reunion

allows visitors to see the Museum’s

Resurrection of Drusiana

in its

original context in the upper left corner. Donated

by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation

in 1961, the painting is one of the finest Early Italian narrative scenes in the Pacific

Northwest.

“This type of exhibition is staged very rarely, so visitors should take advantage of this

special opportunity to see one

of the Museum’s early Renaissance paintings in its

magnificent original context,” said exhibition curator Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet

and Richard Geary Curator of European Art.

Ghissi worked in the Marche, the mountainous Italian region between the Apenn

ines

and the Adriatic Sea. The

St. John Altarpiece

is most extensive ensemble of his work

to have survived, but its original location remains a mystery. It was made in the 1370s

following a typical format for chapels and small churches, in which a large ce

ntral

image of the

Crucifixion

is flanked by smaller narrative scenes. In this case, eight

episodes are devoted to the life of John the Evangelist, who was most likely the

patron saint of the church. True to the spirit of the burgeoning Renaissance, each

s

cene is depicted with great clarity, drama, and humanity, and the ensemble

demonstrates that Ghissi was consistently a masterful storyteller.

During the 19th

or early 20th

century,

the altarpiece

was dismantled and

sawed apart because individual panels

co

uld be sold more lucratively to art

dealers and collectors. In time, all of the

known elements entered U.S. museums.

Portland’s painting and three panels in

the North Carolina Museum of Art

(NCMA) were the gifts of the Samuel

H. Kress Foundation. Three add

itional

panels are in the Metropolitan Museum

of Art, and the central

Crucifixion

is in

the Art Institute of Chicago. After

more than a century of separation, the

paintings are now reunited in this exhibition, first displayed at NCMA last fall, that

retell

s the story of this Early Renaissance masterwork.

Because the ninth painting has never been found, Dutch conservation specialist

Charlotte Caspers was employed to re

-

create it using 14th

-

century materials and

techniques. Caspers worked with NCMA Curator o

f European Art David Steel and

Chief Conservator William Brown to determine the probable subject, composition,

coloring, and other details; then she created the panel with the same type of

pigments and gilding used by Ghissi 650 years ago. The exhibition i

ncludes a video

of the process along with an extensive display documenting all of the pigments and

other materials used.

The bright, gleaming new panel would look

out of place alongside works that had aged

for centuries, so Duke University

mathematicians d

eveloped algorithms to

age Caspers’s work digitally using the crack

patterns and faded colors of the original

panels as a guide. A photograph of the

virtually aged ninth panel will be installed to

complete the

St. John Altarpiece

. The Duke

team also used C

asper’s panel to calculate

algorithms to reverse the effect of aging on the original panels. The resulting images

will be displayed, along with Casper’s panel, to give visitors an impression of the

altarpiece as it would have looked in the 14th

century. Vi

deos explaining the work of

the mathematicians will be available in the gallery.

“It was a true collaboration between conservators, curators, and mathematicians,” says

Steel

, who will discuss the process in a public lecture at Portland Art Museum on

April

2

. “Everyone learned from each other’s research, and it resulted in this

fascinating exhibition that combines art history, mathematics, and technology.”

Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Curated in

Portland by Dawson

Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European

Art.

Public Program:

Reuniting a Masterpiece

(A

pril 2, 2 p.m.

)

For more than 20 years, David Steel

, C

urator of

E

uropean

A

rt

at the N

orth

C

arolina

M

useum of

A

rt

,

has been on a quest: to bring tog

ether all of the nine panels that

originally formed an altarp

iece by the

14th

-

century artist Francescuccio Ghissi. Eight

of the panels are in museum collections, including the Portland Art Museum, but the

final panel has never been located. This led Steel

to propose a radical solution: Why

not re

-

create the missing panel? Come hear more about the journey to reunite this

incredible work of art.

About the Portland Art Museum

The seventh oldest museum in the United States, the Portland Art Museum is

internati

onally recognized for its permanent collection and ambitious special

exhibitions drawn from the Museum’s holdings and the world’s finest public and

private collections. The Museum’s collection of more than 45,000 objects, displayed

in 112,000 square feet o

f galleries, reflects the history of art from ancient times to

today. The collection is distinguished for its holdings of arts of the native peoples of

North America, English silver, and the graphic arts. An active collecting institution

dedicated to prese

rving great art for the enrichment of future generations, the

Museum devotes 90 percent of its galleries to its permanent collection.

The Portland

Art Museum recognized both Native American art and Photography as fine art years

earlier than peer institutio

ns, with a commitment to collection in these areas and the

dedication of permanent galleries for displaying the work. This ongoing commitment

is demonstrated in the arc of Native American exhibitions in 2016 and 2017 and a new

space for showcasing Contempo

rary Native Art.

The Museum’s campus of landmark buildings, a cornerstone of Portland’s cultural

district, includes the Jubitz Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, the Gilkey

Center for Graphic Arts, the Schnitzer Center for Northwest Art, the Northwe

st Film

Center, and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Center for Native American

Art. With a membership of more than 22,000 households and serving more than

350,000 visitors annually, the Museum is a premier venue for education in the visual

arts. The

Portland Art Museum welcomes patrons with disabilities. For information on

exhibitions and programs, call 503

-

226

-

2811 or visit

portlandartmuseum.org

.

The Portland Art Museum welcomes all visitors and

affirms

its commitment to making its programs and

collections accessible to everyone. The Museum

offers a variety of programs and services to ensure a

quality experience and a safe, inclusive environment for every member of our diverse

community. Learn more at

portlandartmuseum.org/access

.

 

 

IMAGE

S

:

Francescuccio Ghissi (Italian, active from 1345

-

1374),

St. John Altarpiece

,

1370s, tempera and gold leaf on wood, including paintings from the Portland Art

Museum, the North Carolina Museu

m of Art, Raleigh, the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, New York, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Resurrection of Drusiana

,

1370s. Tempera and gold leaf on wood. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Reconstruction by Charlotte Caspers of the missing pa

nel

of the Ghissi

Altarpiece

,

commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North

Carolina, 2012

 

 

Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently the Business Reporter. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com

josephgallivan@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

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