N A T I O N A L G A L L E R Y O F A R T • B U L L E T I N • N U M B E R 4 3 • F A L L 2 0 1 0

N A T I O N A L G A L L E R Y O F A R T • B U L L E T I N

The National Gallery of Art’s Centerfor Advanced Study in the VisualArts () offers a wide variety ofcompetitive fellowships to scholars whoapply from all over the world, but threeendowed professorships are appointeddirectly, with the approval of the Boardof Trustees. The expectation is that intheir different ways these distinguishedcolleagues will bring to and theNational Gallery renewed inspirationfor creative research and the higheststandards of curatorial practice.This summer all three professors —

the Samuel H. Kress Professor, theAndrew W. Mellon Professor, and theEdmond J. Safra Visiting Professor —left around the same time, arather unusual concurrence offering anopportunity to reflect on the roles theyplayed and the accomplishments oftheir time here.

The Samuel H. Kress Professor

The first professorship at the NationalGallery of Art was established by theSamuel H. Kress Foundation as a resultof the vision of Franklin D. Murphy,who served as president of both theKress Foundation and the NationalGallery. When was created in 1979,it inherited the professorship. At thattime, former director J. Carter Brownexpressed his hope that the Center, andthe Kress Professor within it, wouldhelp to “narrow any perceived or actualchasm that occasionally seems to yawnbetween the worlds of academia andmuseums.” In his or her year at theCenter, the Kress Professor has onlyone official responsibility, which is to take an interest in the work of the predoctoral fellows in residence.

This year Bert W. Meijer, emeritusprofessor, Utrecht University, and for-merly director of the Istituto Universi-tario Olandese di Storia dell’Arte, Florence, was ’s Kress Professor.Meijer has dedicated many years to the investigation of both Italian andNorthern art of the Renaissance andbaroque periods. At he concen-trated on his ambitious study of Vene-tian drawing, 1590– 1630. Venetianartists and collectors prided themselveson their tradition of colore as opposedto Florentine disegno; few documentedor attributable drawings exist for thisperiod. Through his work at ,Meijer was able to identify drawings byknown masters from whose hand wepreviously had no drawings, to groupothers under the names of little-knownartists, and to classify others awaitingidentification (fig. 1).

The Andrew W. Mellon Professor

Whereas the Kress Professor is oftennear retirement, the Andrew W. MellonProfessor is more typically in midcareerand arrives with a large research agenda.The Mellon professorship was gener-ously created by the Andrew W. MellonFoundation in connection with thefiftieth anniversary of the Gallery andcarries the single responsibility to engagein research in ways that enliven thewhole community.Miguel Falomir, head curator of

the department of Italian Renaissancepainting, Museo Nacional del Prado,and professor, University of Valencia,was ’s eighth Mellon Professor.After curating several ambitious exhibi-tions in Madrid, he looked forward toconcentrating his energies in Washing-ton on the systematic catalogue of theincomparable collection of works byTitian in the Prado. In his first year at he worked on introductoryessays dealing with Titian’s late style,the artist’s relationship with the Habs-burgs, and the reception of his works in Spain. In his second year Falomirfocused on the catalogue itself, provid-ing entries for the forty-two originals by Titian in the Prado plus twentyimportant early copies, some by suchmajor painters as Peter Paul Rubens.In preparing his catalogue, Falomir

studied the materiality of the paintingsas well as the aesthetic, social, and cul-tural circumstances that informed theirproduction. The royal origins of thePrado’s collection mean that an unusualamount of documentation exists con-cerning the shipment of Titian’s paint-ings to Spain, their display, and the his-tory of early restorations. Falomir alsoaddressed Titian’s impact on later artists

casvaCenter for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

The Three Professors

Fig. 1. Odoardo Fialetti, Landscape with

Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1610, pen and ink,

Curtis O. Baer Collection, on deposit at

the National Gallery of Art

such as Rubens, Diego Velázquez, andEdouard Manet.In keeping with new international

standards for collections catalogues,restoration and technical analysis have been carried out for almost all the works associated with Titian at the Prado in connection with Falomir’s catalogue raisonné. Many changes inattribution and dating have come aboutas a consequence, and much new infor-mation about Titian’s working methods(fig. 2) has been generated: underdraw-ing, for instance, was much more fre-quent than had been realized. None ofthis information nor the techniques forinvestigation was available to Harold E. Wethey (Kress Professor, 1982– 1983),author of the standard three-volumecatalogue of Titian’s entire oeuvre, published over the years 1969– 1975.

The Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor

The third of ’s trio of professor-ships was established some eight yearsago when the Edmond J. Safra Philan-thropic Foundation provided a grant tobring a professor to the Center on anannual basis for four to six months. Theterms of the professorship are that the

appointee should be working in a fieldin which the National Gallery has con-siderable interest and/or collections andthat he or she invigorate relationshipsbetween the Gallery and . SafraVisiting Professors have worked in anumber of different areas, includingRenaissance bronzes, old master draw-ings, Italian panel painting, Frenchnineteenth-century printmaking, andtwentieth-century modernism. This yearwith the appointment of Roger Taylorof De Montfort University in England,the spotlight fell on photography.Professor Taylor has previously con-

tributed to two acclaimed exhibitions ofnineteenth-century British photographyseen at the Gallery. At he focusedhis research on the unforgettably namedLinnaeus Tripe (1822– 1902). After serv-ing in the Twelfth Madras nativeinfantry for eleven years, Tripe returnedto Britain in early 1851, just in time tolearn the new medium of photography,which was featured at the Great Exhibi-tion. He returned to India in 1854, taking his camera with him. In 1855 thegovernor general of India appointedTripe as “Artist in photography” toaccompany his political delegation tothe Burmese court; Tripe was made offi-cial photographer to the Madras presi-dency the following year (fig. 3).Less is known about early photogra-

phers such as Tripe than about manyRenaissance artists, and while at

Taylor made great headway in establish-ing details of Tripe’s education and the influence of his military career andtraining, with its emphasis on intelli-gence gathering and surveying. Much of this material is newly available online,but the important thing for Taylor wasthe chance to share his discoveries withmembers of the Center and the curator-ial staff, and to do so often in the pres-ence of original works of art.Under ’s auspices, Safra Profes-

sors have usually designed a colloquyon their area of expertise, inviting asmall group of emerging scholars andcurators from all over the world to par-ticipate, with support from the AndrewW. Mellon Foundation or the Robert

H. Smith Grant. This year’s three-daymeeting included curators, conservators,and historians of photography andfocused on the work of Tripe, RogerFenton, and Timothy O’Sullivan. It featured presentations by Taylor andmembers of the Gallery’s curatorial staff as well as by colleagues from theLibrary of Congress, the SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum, and theNational Archives, who all welcomedthe group to view their collections.

is in a remarkable position to advance research in the visual arts,given the great resources of theNational Gallery and of Washington,and given the support of enlightenedbenefactors. In turn, the trio of profes-sorships contributes experience andknowledge of museums and scholarshipfrom around the world. These distin-guished colleagues are missed through-out the Gallery when the time comesto say goodbye. • Elizabeth Cropper,Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts

N U M B E R 4 3 • F A L L 2 0 1 0

Fig. 2.Titian, Philip II, 1551, oil on canvas,

x-radiograph with red lines showing

earlier version under painting’s surface,

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Fig. 3. Captain Linnaeus Tripe, Amerapoora:

East Door of the Maha-thugea-yan-tee

Pagoda, 1855, print, National Gallery of Art,

Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation through

Robert and Joyce Menschel