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Discovering Early Modern European Art (1300-1700) in Little-Known American Museums and Collections
This summer, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a research assistantship under Dr. Chris Platts, an art history professor at DAAP on a special and important project in his field. Chris is an expert of early modern European art, specifically medieval and early Renaissance paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and sculpture. Through his study of this kind of artwork, he realized that there are many small museums, special collections libraries, churches, and other public institutions in the Midwest that have significant unstudied early modern European artworks that remain in storage, unknown to art historians and the public. Especially living in the Midwest, he took it upon himself, and enlisted the help of an assistant, to find some of these small, unknown institutions that may have a piece of artwork that is very rare and special, without even knowing it. (It is more common than you may think!)
My role in this was doing research by searching in 20th century censuses of early European artwork, doing comprehensive online, database, and catalogue searches to initially find small institutions, and then find out everything I could about their art collections. I would then send an email to every one of them, in order to get the best sense of their holdings. I took all of the information on each institution, and everything of interest I found, and compiled them into a document for me and Chris to share and discuss. I ended up searching and writing to around 50 different institutions. Most of my work consisted of emails like this!
My role this summer was mostly to simply identify institutions and then collect evidence of the items in their collections. This being said, we did find a wealth of incredible early European artwork, which I spent a great deal of time learning about. I have decorated the borders of this page with some examples of the works we were finding in colleges, libraries, churches, and small museums in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
The most incredible and promising unstudied piece of artwork that we located during this summer, we found right here in Cincinnati in the Cincinnati Public Library's rare books collection. We took three in person trips to their Cincinnati Room in the downtown branch of the library to view the extremely impressive collection of rare books that they have.
When we visited we saw a variety of rare books and pages from all over Europe and Asia. The one that stood out was a 1656 French Book of Hours, fully illuminated with 8 miniature paintings, and signed by the French calligrapher Nicolas Jarry. Upon first glance (to my untrained eye), I thought this book was beautiful and extremely well made, not to mention perfectly preserved! But, what Chris told me and the librarian, Sara Williams, about this book definitely surpassed our expectations.
After some thorough research, Chris concluded that this book is the most deluxe and highly illuminated book known to be scribed by Nicolas Jarry, the most successful scribe of the 17th century, and the personal scribe to King Louis XIV and other royalty. Furthermore, this book is not mentioned in a single history book or scholarly article, making it an incredible find to introduce into academia, and to help the library get a better idea of the historical value of this book.
In all, this research assistantship was one of the most educational and eye-opening experiences of my life. I think that most people don't realize or notice the wealth of important pieces of history from all around the world that exist right in our communities. Even our own university has unbelievable collections from all subjects and all time periods. We have a unique opportunity to be able to see these artifacts in person, and interact with them, which is a privilege that should not be taken lightly. This project has gotten me so excited about research in the art world, and I hope to continue participating in work like this.
