Charles Townley in His Sculpture Gallery, also known as Charles Townley at His Library at no. 7 Park Street in Westminster, is an oil on canvas painting by German British artist Johann Zoffany, made in 1782. It is held in the Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museum, in Burnley.
The painting witnesses the interest and fascination exercised by the ancient art of Greece and Rome, during the neoclassical period, and the wish to collect ancient pieces, casts or reproductions of Roman or Hellenistic statues experienced by many collectors and intellectuals of that time. In the painting, Charles Townley, the landlord, sits on the right in a red velvet armchair, engaged in a discussion with three friends. The room where the four figures are placed is filled with famous statues and sculptural groups from the ancient times, such as the Discobolus, discovered in 1791 at Hadrian's Villa, and only added to the work (completed in 1782) after that year. [1] In the painting, in fact, Zoffany does not deal so much with describing in detail the interior of the library, of which only the fireplace and the bookcase at the bottom are portrayed, but with creating a picturesque "virtual space" where is gathered the collection of antiquities of Townley, who were actually scattered in several rooms of his home in Park Street, Westminster, in London. [2]
Charles Townley FRS was a wealthy English country gentleman, antiquary and collector, a member of the Towneley family. He travelled on three Grand Tours to Italy, buying antique sculpture, vases, coins, manuscripts and Old Master drawings and paintings. Many of the most important pieces from his collection, especially the Townley Marbles are now in the British Museum's Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. The marbles were overshadowed at the time, and still today, by the Elgin Marbles.
Richard Wilson was an influential Welsh landscape painter, who worked in Britain and Italy. With George Lambert he is recognised as a pioneer in British art of landscape for its own sake and was described in the Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales as the "most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country". In December 1768 Wilson became one of the founder-members of the Royal Academy. A catalogue raisonné of the artist's work compiled by Paul Spencer-Longhurst is published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
The Vatican Museums are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon section of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded and opened in 1934, it holds collections from the mid-19th century that were amassed substantially by major American art and sculpture collectors, including William Thompson Walters and his son Henry Walters. William Walters began collecting when he moved to Paris as a nominal Confederate loyalist at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, and Henry Walters refined the collection and made arrangements for the construction what ultimately was Walters Art Museum.
The Discobolus by Myron is an Ancient Greek sculpture completed at the start of the Classical period at around 460–450 BC. The sculpture depicts a youthful male athlete throwing a discus. The bronze Greek original is lost. The work is known through its numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in marble, which is cheaper than bronze, such as the first to be recovered, the Palombara Discobolus, and smaller scaled versions in bronze.
John Henry Foley, often referred to as J. H. Foley, was an Irish sculptor, working in London. he is best known for his statues of Daniel O'Connell in Dublin, and of Prince Albert for the Albert Memorial in London.
Gavin Hamilton was a Scottish neoclassical history painter, who is more widely remembered for his searches for antiquities in the neighbourhood of Rome. These roles in combination made him an arbiter of neoclassical taste.
Johan Joseph Zoffany was a German neoclassical painter who was active mainly in England, Italy and India. His works appear in many prominent British collections, including the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the Royal Collection, as well as institutions in continental Europe, India, the United States and Australia. His name is sometimes spelled Zoffani or Zauffelij.
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–1778) by Johan Zoffany is a painting of the north-east section of the Tribuna room in the Uffizi in Florence, Italy. The painting is part of the United Kingdom's Royal Collection.
The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, also known as the Large Cowper Madonna, is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, depicting Mary and Child, against a blue sky.
Thomas Patch was an English painter, printmaker in etching, physiognomist and art historian. He made a living from painting views of Florence and Tivoli and appears to have sold a number of painted caricature groups to members of the Anglo-Florentine community and to young British men on the Grand Tour. The largest collection of his paintings and prints is in the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut.
George Nassau Clavering-Cowper, 3rd Earl Cowper was an English peer who went on the Grand Tour as a young man, but actually emigrated. Despite becoming a member of parliament and later inheriting lands and the title of Earl Cowper in England, he remained in Italy. He amassed a valuable art collection and became a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. He was a patron of the arts and science.
The Death of Captain James Cook, 14 February 1779 is a painting by Johann Zoffany. The painting records the loss of the British explorer Captain James Cook. The painting was made in around 1794 or 1795, some years after the death of Cook in 1779. Other paintings of the death of Cook were painted earlier. The Mahiole that was included in the painting of Cook's death by Zoffany is said to be the helmet given to Cook when he first landed in Hawaii.
The Annunciation with St. Margaret and St. Ansanus is a painting by the Italian Gothic artists Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi, now housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It is a wooden triptych painted in tempera and gold, with a central panel having double size. Considered Martini's masterwork and one of the most outstanding works of Gothic painting, the work was originally painted for a side altar in the Siena Cathedral.
Monna Vanna is an 1866 oil on canvas painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was acquired by the collector William Henry Blackmore and later entered the collection of George Rae, one of Rossetti's patrons. It later passed from Rae to the joint ownership of Arthur Du Cros and Otto Beit and it was purchased from them by the Tate Gallery in 1916 via the NACF – it is now in the collection of Tate Britain in London.
The Victorious Athlete or The Triumphant Athlete is an 1813 oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez, now in the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.
Lampugnani's Conspiracy is an 1826 oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez, now in the pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, which acquired it in 1907. It shows the conspiracy led by Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, Girolamo Olgiati, Carlo Visconti and Cola Montano to overthrow the tyranny of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, killed on 26 December 1476 in Santo Stefano church in Milan.
Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni is an 1841 oil-on-canvas portrait of Alessandro Manzoni by the Italian painter Francesco Hayez, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera. It was commissioned in 1840 by Manzoni's second wife countess Teresa Borri Stampa and his son Stefano. After fifteen sittings the painter completed the work on 26 June 1841. Eight years later Teresa commissioned a portrait of herself by the same artist.
Cousin Argia is an 1861 oil on card painting by Giovanni Fattori, now in the Gallery of Modern Art in Florence. A label on the reverse is inscribed "Gio. Fattori alla sua cugina Argia. Anno 1861", but this may not be in the artist's own hand and no Argia is known in his family.
Theseus and the Minotaur is a 1781-1782 white marble sculpture by Antonio Canova, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which bought it in 1962.
 | This article about an eighteenth-century painting is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |