Resources & Recommendations #12

to listen

Fairy Tales and Forests: The Grimms and Caspar David Friedrich

With Friedrich’s anniversary celebrations in full flow, it feels an appropriate time to look back on an episode of Neil MacGregor’s BBC Radio 4 series ‘Germany: Memories of a Nation’, highlighting why the artist holds such a cherished place in the German imagination. In this episode, MacGregor reveals how the fairy tales collected by the Grimms and the landscape art of Caspar David Friedrich played a vital role in re-establishing an identity for German-speaking people who had been defeated by Napoleon.

to watch

The Spinario by Jan Gossart (CODART Canon)

In recent weeks CODART launched a Youtube channel with recordings from annual congresses, curator interviews and the Canon video series. In this video, Jef Schaeps, Curator of Prints and Drawings, Print Room of University Leiden, Netherlands, discusses Jan Gossart’s drawing of the Spinario, one of 100 Masterpieces of Dutch and Flemish art (1350 – 1750) selected for the CODART Canon.

to read

Making faces: the science of expressions in Georgian drawings, Kirsten Tambling

This illuminating article explores how Georgian artists studied and depicted human emotions through facial expressions, drawing on the translated lectures of the French painter and theorist, Charles Le Brun, and contemporary studies in physiognomy and anatomy. It delves into the intersection of art and science during the 18th century using examples from William Hogarth and William Blake. These drawings and the efforts of contemporary writers highlight the reality that expressive potential of the human face is not so easy to systematise.