NEW ISSUE
SCALA REGIA #9
RARE COPIES AVAILABLE
SPREADS AND
LIST OF CONTENTS
THE MUSES OF CHARLES MEYNIER
1.
REINVENTING THE ORIGINS
FOR A HOPEFUL FUTURE
THE ETRUSCAN TASTE IN THE
TWILIGHT OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME
Words by Gabriel Wick
“In 1785, Louis XVI’s director of Royal Buildings and Manufactures, the comte d’Angiviller, commissioned the painter of ruins Hubert Robert to oversee the recreation of a complete ‘antique’ interior which was to serve as a royal dairy at the king’s hunting estate of Rambouillet. The dairy was part of an ensemble of innovative projects on the estate that included experimental plantations and model agricultural installations. Together these projects framed the king as a progressive, a reformer willing to break with the past. While the other structures at Rambouillet were conceived along largely functional lines, the dairy was to be a total artwork. Angiviller set some of the crown’s foremost artistic collaborators to work alongside Robert, notably the painter Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, the sculptor Pierre Julien, the furniture-maker Georges Jacob, and the artistry and technical prowess of the Manufacture de Sèvres. The dairy was to be a retreat for the royal family but it was also, and perhaps more importantly, a vitrine for the French arts and luxury production. Angiviller decreed that the project would employ a relatively avant-garde aesthetic, the ‘goût étrusque’ or Etruscan taste, an idiom loosely based on the funerary artefacts of this italic people considered to be the forebearers of Ancient Rome. By the mid-1780s, the nearly insolvent Bourbon regime was on borrowed time, and when the last elements of the scheme were delivered in May 1788, the monarchy was foundering. Under the Revolutionary regime, the Etruscan dairy and its fittings were dispersed.”
2.
PALAZZO MILZETTI
AN EXCEPTIONAL REPERTOIRE
OF NEOCLASSICAL ORNAMENT
Words and photography by Marco Cavina
“Palazzo Milzetti is a stately building located in Faenza, a city in the Emilia-Romagna Region of Northern Italy. Precisely in Faenza, between the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in the interregnum between the Jacobin revolution and the Napoleonic period, lucky circumstances materialized in which a cultured and politically engaged aristocracy financed the construction of considerable buildings, as well as gathered a host of talented artists and artisans who greatly contributed to the unrepeatable phase that was the Neoclassical Age and left for posterity decorative schemes of the highest level. As the greatest example of ‘Neoclassicismo Faentino’, Palazzo Milzetti, after being purchased by the Italian State in 1973, serves today as the Museum of the Neoclassical Age in Romagna.”
3.
A MARS WITHOUT A VENUS
THE LIFE OF PRINCE
EUGENE OF SAVOY
Words by Tiago Lorga
The rejection from Louis XIV, together with the scepticism felt by his contemporaries based on his rumoured family history and unimpressive physical bearing, made this man, Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignano, fight against all of his peers’ expectations. He went on to change his allegiance to the Holy Roman Empire and the House of Habsburg, becoming one of the most brilliant military commanders of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He led many battles of men, and as a battle he also led his life.
4.
GOLD FOR BREAKFAST
AN EFFULGENT MASTERWORK FOR
THE KING OF PORTUGAL
Words by Cristina Neiva Correia
Photography by Marita Rita
Special thanks to Museu Nacional
de Arte Antiga and Nobilis
A small treasure trove that took thirteen years to travel from Paris to Lisbon, the ‘déjeuner en or’ of José I of Portugal is both a caprice and a statement. Impeccably kept by the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, as our photographs taken against plush gem-coloured Nobilis velvets can illustrate, this set has stories to tell and mysteries yet to be solved. Cristina Neiva Correia, the Ceramics Curator at Ajuda Palace in Lisbon and contributor to Scala Regia, has aided us in shedding some light on these intricate objects.
5.
FINE FEATHERS
THE FASHION COVER STORY
Photography by Maria Rita
Art direction by Diogo Mayo and Pierre Roffe
Special thanks to Krikor Jabotian,
Roger Vivier and Féau & Cie
Beauty is contrast and harmony combined, and to prove it Krikor Jabotian brought together the most opulent silks with the finest feathers to a result of tantalising appeal. To encase and photograph his creations of haute couture perfection our team travelled to Paris, to the ‘quartier général’ of Féau & Cie, to surround beauty with beauty. The result, Etruscan and Neoclassical reverberations that echo eternal dresses.
6.
HÔTEL DE BEAUHARNAIS
A PRODIGIOUS ORDER
Words by Miguel Bermudez
Photography by Francis Hammond
Today the official residence of the German Ambassador to France, and owing its current name to Eugène de Beauharnais, son of Empress Joséphine, Hôtel de Beauharnais holds a suite of rooms, furniture and other interventions that demonstrate how the decorative arts style promoted during the Napoleonic era could be expressed so unbounded. The result can be described as the nec plus ultra of imperial opulence, and as the very face of the word sumptuous.
7.
THE MUTE SWAN
ON THE MUSES OF
CHARLES MEYNIER
Words by Jordan Anderson
Currently housed in the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, the group of five monumental works named “Apollo and the Muses” are an exuberant, exquisite example of the high level of painting achieved in the early Neoclassical period. Executed by the French painter Charles Meynier between 1798 and 1800, this series not only inspires awe from its virtuous technique but also inspires, through its subject matter — the personifications of the divine sources of inspiration behind humankind’s talents; in particular for the arts, literature and science —, the contemplation of Virtue itself, found at the heart of art and of artists of yesterday and today. Such reflection prompted the musings, likely inspired by Polyhymnia, the Muse of Eloquence, in the present Jordan Anderson’s art criticism piece.
8.
CASA DEL LABRADOR
THE ENCHANTING RETREAT
OF A SPANISH KING
Words by Enric-Eduard Giménez
Photography by Josep Solé Llagostera
Brilliant fantasy or superior ‘capolavoro’? Likely both... Its name might fool you but Casa del Labrador, or ‘house of the farm labourer’, is no dwelling for the common man. It is in fact the retreat of a king, Carlos IV of Spain, and to accomplish it, no efforts nor the most sumptuous materials were spared. The result is a solar, relaxed and pleasingly rich creation, arguably one of the most extraordinary Spanish royal residences.
9.
MICROMOSAIC
A ROMAN STORY THAT BRINGS
EAST AND WEST TOGETHER
Words by Alessandra di Castro
Micromosaic, an art form of composing pictures using but the tiniest tiles, has been sometimes overlooked in history but inspired numerous pieces of virtuous handiwork executed in Lilliputian scale. The technique has been here since the Ancient Romans, formed a great part of the Byzantine Empire’s splendour, and since the Renaissance up until the nineteenth-century aroused the genious of many artists. It has captivated especially the travellers and collectors coming to Rome during their Grand Tour, where they would seek the jewellery and small souvenirs showing pleasant landmarks as well as other motifs. After all, these were fragments of the world that one could hold on the palm of one’s hand.
10.
THORVALDSENS MUSEUM
A DANISH NEOCLASSICAL
GESAMTKUNTSWERK
Words by Margrethe Floryan
Photography by Mads Alexander Lund
In central Copenhagen lies a building planned to the smallest detail, from floor to ceiling, from tile to doorknob, to become more than just an architectural design but an all-encompassing experience of beauty: a true Gesamtkunstwerk. Impressive as it is, it is meant to magnify and laud the smooth perfection of the extensive body of work of the celebrated sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen — the resulting union being the Thorvaldsens Museum, from which Dr. Margrethe Floryan, Senior Curator, has penned for us the following article.
SCALA REGIA, 2022
