ZOFFANY, Johann

Antiquity was the great theme in British painting in the last decades of the 18th century. Its influence can be traced in two areas particularly - in literature, which often comes close to the macabre, and in the excavations of antique sites, which were followed with intense interest at the time. The excavation sites attracted the British travelers on the Grand Tour, and soon a fever for collecting developed that dominated elegant taste throughout Europe.

Charles Towneley (1737-1805) was the most famous of the many English collectors. Zoffany portrayed him in his library with an imaginary assembly of the entire collection in the one room. He is shown with three friends: Charles Greville, a politician, Thomas Astle, conservator of the British Museum, and Pierre d’Hancarville, French antiquarian. The owner of the house and his counterpart, d’Hancarville, who is wearing a Rococo costume, are seated in Baroque armchairs, but the rest of the interior decoration is in the new style. This is determined by the collection itself, which was later donated to the British Museum.

Zoffany painted this picture for Warren Hastings, the British Governor General of Bengal from 1772 to 1785, under whose rule genuine co-operation flourished between the British and the Indians. His lively picture, executed in the notably relaxed court of the Nawab of Oudh, of a cock match between the Nawab’s bird and that of the Englishman Colonel Mordaunt had no pictorial precedent, and revels instead in intimate detail, narrative and vivid colour. The British and Indians, while carefully differentiated, appear as equals in the contest and Mordaunt’s pointed Indian slippers show him adopting the local fashions. If some of the British officers seem somewhat stiff, and the Indian servants excitable, the difference is as much of class or caste as of race, and it must be remembered that, as a German, Zoffany could observe each dispassionately. He has placed himself at the right of the scene, pencil in hand, looking on with sardonic amusement.

Ann Brown was an actress and singer, here portrayed in the role of Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Between 1769 and 1779 Ann Brown was a player in the company of the famous actor David Garrick, a friend and patron of Zoffany, who also painted him in various scenes from the stage.

Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria (1746-1804) was the wife of Ferdinand I, Duke of Parma (1751-1802). She was the daughter of the Habsburg Empress, Maria Theresa (1717-1780), and the elder sister of Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI of France. Maria Amalia and Ferdinand married in 1769. However the union was not a success, and due to adulterous affairs, they were effectively separated by 1775. Maria Amalia remained in Parma with Ferdinand, and despite largely living apart, they managed to produce seven children together.

Zoffany’s portrait makes the separation clear. Maria Amalia emphatically turns away from her husband, who is represented only in the form of a portrait placed above a conspicuously empty chair.

This painting is a version of the portrait of Ferdinando, Duke of Parma, the grandson of Louis XV of France, in the National Gallery of Parma. The Duke is wearing the cordon of the French Order of the Saint-Esprit over the Two Sicilies Order of San Gennaro. In the background a view of the city of Parma can be seen.

Sir Robert Preston (1740-1834) was a rich merchant and philanthropist, one of Zoffany’s sponsors. Zoffany painted two further portraits of Preston circa 1790-93,

William Stackhouse (1720-1771) was a Doctor of Divinity and Rector of St Erme, near Truro, in Cornwall.

Zoffany was born near Frankfurt-am-Main and in 1760 travelled to England, where he won success as a painter of conversation pieces and theatrical scenes. He was extensively patronised by George III and Queen Charlotte, although he had no official connection with the court. Zoffany was nominated personally by George III in 1769 for membership of the newly founded Royal Academy, where he exhibited between 1770 and 1800. The artist was absent from England for two long periods: firstly in Italy from 1772 to 1778 and secondly in India from 1783 to 1789.

Some of Zoffany’s most captivating work was done for the Royal Family, for example, Queen Charlotte and her Two Eldest Sons of 1771. Like the conversation pieces, many of the single portraits are imbued with a surprising degree of informality implied more by the pose than the finish, which is always meticulous. Both qualities are apparent in the portrait of Prince Ernest Gottlob Albert of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where the sitter leans nonchalantly against a chair and looks away from the viewer. The figure is sharply lit from the right, but set against a dark background. The coiffure, the facial features and the uniform are all carefully and precisely modelled, but in such a way that the technical skill heightens the effect of the characterisation.

Prince Ernest of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1742-1814) was the youngest brother of Queen Charlotte. He is depicted in Hanoverian military uniform, wearing the ribbon and star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle. He was a keen soldier and in 1788 George III appointed him General of Infantry in the British Army. The portrait was probably painted for Queen Charlotte in the spring of 1772 as the sitter had returned to Hanover by May.

The painting has become one of the most celebrated images of eighteenth-century taste. Zoffany shows a group of connoisseurs and members of the nobility admiring works of art in the Tribuna, the principal room of the Uffizi in Florence, which was the most famous gallery in the world during the eighteenth century. The Tribuna had been built by Francesco de’ Medici in 1585-9 to a design by Bernardo Buontalenti as a showcase for the most precious items in the Medici collection. Although Zoffany has depicted the architectural features of the Tribuna with a fair degree of accuracy, he has rearranged the works of art and in some cases altered their scale. In fact, he has also incorporated a number of paintings from that part of the Medici collection housed in the Palazzo Pitti, as well as including several additional pieces of sculpture. The painter thus successfully gives the gallery a more crowded and undoubtedly richer appearance than it had during the eighteenth century, and by this means has facilitated his rendering of the complicated sightlines of the room and the perspectival inlaid marble decoration of the floor. The setting is therefore somewhat idealised, but it remains a perfectly accurate representation of the significance of the Tribuna for eighteenth-century connoisseurship, with its emphasis on the antique, the High Renaissance, the Bolognese school and Rubens.

Zoffany painted the picture in Florence expressly for Queen Charlotte, beginning in 1772. Much of the composition was completed the following year, but the artist continued working on it intermittently until late in 1777, making changes some of which are now only visible by X-ray. Notable among these changes is the inclusion of a self portrait on the left of the composition, where the artist has shown himself peering round the unframed canvas of the Virgin and Child by Raphael. For this purpose, it is almost as if the painter has abandoned his easel, partly visible in the lower right corner of the picture, and walked across or around the back of the room to partake in the discussion. The figures in the picture, all of whom are identifiable, fall into three groups: those on the left between the sculptures of Cupid and Psyche and Satyr with the Cymbals; those in the foreground, right of centre, gathered around the Venus d’Urbino by Titian; and those on the right around the Venus de’ Medici. These portraits were meticulously painted by Zoffany and won widespread admiration, although apparently not from George III and Queen Charlotte, who claimed that such recognisable figures were inappropriate to the scene. In essence, however, Zoffany has amalgamated the traditional subject of a gallery view, much exploited by Flemish painters in the seventeenth century, with the conversation piece evolved by British painters during the eighteenth century, although recently other more cryptic levels of meaning have been sought in the picture.

Royal patronage enabled the artist to have the Venus d’Urbino by Titian taken down from the wall for copying after the Grand Duke of Tuscany (Ferdinando I) had specifically decreed that the picture had been copied too much and should not be moved again for such a purpose.

Correspondingly, there are one or two references in the picture to the Royal Collection: the Virgin and Child by Raphael, held by the artist, was a work that was offered to George III by Earl Cowper (this is the Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington) and the Samian Sibyl by Guercino, seen at the lower edge of the composition, is a pendant to the Libyan Sibyl by the same artist bought by George III in the 1760s.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi is a technical tour de force. The attention to detail and texture involves not just the portraits, but also the copies after the works of art nearly all of which are identifiable. Controlled brushwork and careful application are the hallmarks of Zoffany’s style, and they are seen at their best in this famous picture without any of the loss of verve that such a long and elaborate undertaking might have forced upon the artist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 19 minutes):

Modest Mussorgsky: Picture from an Exhibition, arr. by Maurice Ravel (excerpts)

The detail shows the figures on the left between the sculptures of Cupid and Psyche, and Satyr with the Cymbals. At the left of Raphael’s Niccolini-Cowper Madonna they are (from left to right):

1. George 3rd Earl Cowper (1738-89), Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. A distinguished collector and lover of Florence.

2. Sir John Dick (1720-1804), Baronet of Braid. British consul at Leghorn, 1754-76. He is wearing his badge as a Baronet of Nova Scotia and the ribbon and star of the Russian Order of St Anne of Schleswig-Holstein.

3. Other Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth (1751-99). He was in Florence in January, february and June 1772.

4. Johann Zoffany.

At the right of Raphael’s Madonna:

5. Mr. Stevenson, companion to Lord Lewisham on his travels.

6. George Legge, Lord Lewisham, later 3rd Earl of Dartmouth (1755-1810). He embarked on a tour of the Continent with Mr. Stevenson in July 12775. They were in Florence on 2 December 1777.

The paintings on the wall are

Raphael, Madonna della Sedia

Correggio, Virgin and Child

Sustermans, Galileo

Raphael, Madonna del Cardellino.