Abstract. Baccio del Bianco’s career, an artist with a polyvalent education and multiple talents, is examined in the light of the artistic politics dominant in Florence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as a result of a cultural programme carefully coordinated by the Medici court: a clear emphasis on the manual, productive aspect of the arts, and on the “applied arts,” and a close connection between the artistic domain and the scientific one. For both of these fields the concept and practice of disegno is central; the almost exclusive use of the graphic medium by Baccio del Bianco and the circle of artists around Giulio Parigi is considered in relation to the role of the artist in this courtly milieu. 

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ADRIAN-SILVAN IONESCU

Les relations du sculpteur américain George Julian Zolnay avec la Roumanie, son pays natal

Abstract. Born on 4th of July 1862 in Bucharest, of a former 1848 Hungarian revolutionist father, and a Romanian mother, George Julian Zolnay was a graduate of the School of Fine Arts and a good violin player too. While following the sculpture classes of the Vienna Fine Arts Academy his professor recommended him to go to the United States to give a helping hand to the completion of the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exhibition. He settled there and in 1897 received his American citizenship. Zolnay eventually became a reputed American sculptor but he had never forgotten his native country. On the contrary, he kept a constant correspondence with former friends, colleagues and army comrades. As a tribute to his native country, in 1899, he offered to the Art Museum in Bucharest a gesso model of his most recent sculpture. Called Grief, his work was a funerary monument for Winnie Davis’s tomb in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. His gift was gratefully received and King Carol I awarded him the Bene Merenti Medal. This distinction made a great sensation among his American colleagues from the Arts Club in New York who offered a dinner in his honor. In 1902, while paying a visit to Romania, he was received by King Carol in a private audience at the Peleș Castle in Sinaia. Years later, in 1929, Zolnay wrote a comprehensive autobiography for his two daughters in which he described this important event in his life. King Carol seemed interested in everything American and asked him a lot of questions on various topics thus prolonging the meeting to more than an hour, a fact which was unheard at the Romanian Court where stern rules where duly observed.

In 1911 he planned another visit to Romania, to show it to his wife and introduce her to his family. The young lady prepared a Romanian folk costume, precious wedding gift from her mother-in-low, to wear at the audience to the Royal Court. But a cholera epidemic prevented the Zolnays to travel down the Danube and all hopes to come to Bucharest were given up.

Zolnay’s following trip to Romania was in the spring of 1923. At that time, the sculptor was in Italy supervising the founding of his latest monument for Nashville, Tennessee, the War Memorial also called the Fallen Warrior, or the Soldier’s Mother or the Gold Star Monument. Taking a leave from the foundry, he undertook an exhausting and perilous train voyage to his native country, via Yugoslavia. He spent a few weeks in Bucharest where life was quite cheap. Consequently, the sculptor enjoyed luxury accommodation and lavishly meals in the Capital City. He was kindly received by Queen Marie who firstly chided him for having made America his home instead of devoting his life to the artistic and intellectual development of his country. Their conversation was undertaken in three languages because Zolnay was an accomplished polyglot. The artist showed the pictures of his monument to the Queen who expressed her wish to have the War Memorial placed in one of the central plazas. Afterwards, they talked about the United States for Queen Marie’s great desire was to visit that faraway country – a dream which was accomplished three years later in the triumphal journey from coast to coast. Queen Marie enjoyed their talking and asked him to visit her again but that opportunity was lost due to Her Majesty’s unexpected voyage to Belgrade, to see her daughter, young Queen Marioara of Yugoslavia.

Back to Italy, Zolnay wrote a letter to his friend, the diplomat Vasile Stoica, asking his counsel and help for rising funds from the Romanian community in the United States. The money was needed for founding a bronze replica of the War Memorial. Unfortunately, neither money nor monument was rose in Bucharest. In spite of this failure, Zolnay kept good memories for his meeting with Queen Marie and her brilliant conversation.

CORINA TEACĂ

Fin de Siècle Biographies: Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti

Abstract. The subject of this article is life of Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, the first Romanian modern art collector, analysed in decadent context. 

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GHEORGHE VIDA

János Fadrusz et l’historisme européen

Résumé. L'étude se propose de situer l'œuvre du sculpteur Jánosz Fadrusz (1858-1903) dans le contexte stylistique de l'historisme européen. Ses travaux (par exemple l'équestre de Mathieu Corvin de Cluj-Napoca ou les monuments de Miklós Wesselényi de Zalău et de Lajós Tisza de Szeged, Hongrie) peuvent être assimilés à un historisme de type romantique avec une surprenante ouverture vers la modernité rodinienne de son époque.

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ANGELO MITCHIEVICI

Kimon Loghi, le symboliste

Résumé. Peintre romantique par tempérament et par sa formation munichoise à l’école des symbolistes Franz von Stuck et Arnold Böcklin, Kimon Loghi relève une véritable sensibilité symboliste visiblement marquée dans une bonne partie par les peintures de sa première période. Il réalise une intéressante symbiose entre les thèmes symbolistes présents dans les peintures des symbolistes allemands, mais également populaires dans le cadre de la secession et celui idyllique-féerique, vivement colorié, chaud, méditerranéen dans lequel il les place. L’art du portrait en tant qu’expression d’un état d’âme reflète en égale mesure la sensibilité symboliste du peintre avec son penchant vers le mystère, la contemplation et le symbole.

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MAGDA PREDESCU

Le rôle des anachronismes dans l’oeuvre de Peter Jacobi 

Abstract. Affirmed during the 60’s – 70’s, Peter Jacobi is a complex personality that, except for painting, has experienced all the means of artistic production. We find in his work a constant preoccupation for the places of the memory – personal or collective – which he recovers by photographic procedures. Peter Jacobi has a genuine passion for capturing or producing discontinuities in the image. Much like any post-modernist, the artist is sensitive to the assemblage of signs and fragments and has a sense of quotation, of fabrication of the new starting from previous data. The cultural screens and the visual layers added thanks to new photographic procedures transform the compositions into dialectical images enhancing the value of the interstice, of the interval iconology operating as a method of dissemination of the cultural forms without imposing, however, the pure transversality. 

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IOANA VLASIU

La bohème, les amis. L’art jeune transylvain de l’entre-deux guerres 

Résumé. Les histoires de l’art roumain du XXe siecle ont privilégié plutôt l’art de Bucarest, de la capitale, où évidemment régnait une plus grande diversité et ampleur de la vie artistique, absentes ailleurs. Le jeune art de Cluj connaît dans les années ’30 un remarquable essor grâce à la fondation, ici, de l’Ecoles des beaux-arts en 1925, après l’Union de la Transylvanie au royaume de Roumanie à la suite de la première guerre mondiale. Autour des professeurs, eux mêmes tres jeunes – Catul Bogdan, Romul Ladea, Anastase Demian, Aurel Ciupe - des artistes des premières promotions, essaient dans des conditions peu propices de construire un climat artistique et d’affirmer une modernité qui ait ses traits caractéristiques et une certaine originalité par rapport à l’art bucarestois de la même époque.  

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ADRIAN GUŢĂ

On the Generation 2000 and Neo-Pop in Contemporary Romanian Art  

Abstract. The present study focuses on the generation 2000 of the Romanian contemporary art and on one of the tendencies to be identified in its work, namely Neo-Pop. This generation’s representatives are fine arts graduates from the late 1990s to at least 2005. The Neo-Pop direction, sometimes related to the Neo-Conceptual one, may be temporarily or partially developed by these young artists. Since the 1990s and increasingly, consumerism and media culture inspired and motivated the Neo-Pop option for artists who grew up in an urban context progressively responding to globalisation. Authors’ attitudes include irony, playfulness, critical accents, they dismantle taboos of representation; the artists revisit Pop stylistic characteristics in painting, but they also work with readymades, installation, photography, video, they contribute to street art, they revitalize comics. The study shortly refers to a number of examples: artists of the generation 2000 and their works created along the first decade of the twenty one century.

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NOTES ET DOCUMENTS

CONSTANTIN I. CIOBANU

La symétrie « dissimulée » dans l’ordonnance des illustrations aux strophes de la deuxième moitié de L’Hymne Acathiste peintes sur la façade méridionale de l’église de la Décollation de Saint-Jean le Précurseur du village d’Arbore 

Résumé. Cette note a comme but l’explication de l’ordonnance insolite des illustrations aux strophes de la deuxième moitié de l’Hymne Acathiste peintes sur la façade méridionale de l’église de La décollation de Saint Jean le Précurseur du village d’Arbore. D’une manière à peu près mathématique, en partant de l’ordonnance consacrée des illustrations aux strophes de l’hymne, l’auteur essaye de démontrer comment, grâce à l’utilisation itérative du même cliché sur les parties recto et verso des décalques, peut-on obtenir le groupement des illustrations de l’église d’Arbore.

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MARINA SABADOS

Icônes des peintres russes Kirill et Vassili Oulanov dans la région de Suceava

Abstract. The article introduces two groups of royal icons to be found in Suceava county. They were painted by Russian artists from the Armory Palace of the Moscow Kremlin at the beginning of the 18th century. Four royal icons of the former iconostasis in St. Nicholas church in Rădăuţi – Pantokrator, Virgin and Child, St. John the Forerunner and St. Nicholas – were painted by Kirill Ulanov, Alexei Kvashnin and a certain Peter, in Moscow, in 1707. Three other royal icons of the iconostasis (second half of the 18^th century) in St. Elias church near Suceava – Pantokrator, Virgin and Child and Saint Trinity – were created by Kirill Oulanov and his brother Vassili, in 1708, in Moscow as well.

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CHRONIQUE

Session annuelle du département d’art médiéval de l’Institut d’Histoire de l’Art «G.Oprescu» de Bucarest : Nouvelles données dans la recherche de l’art médiéval de Roumanie, 7e édition, 16–17 décembre 2010 (Département d’art médiéval), p. 149

Symposium The Living Archive – around the Donation of Art Historian Barbu Brezianu (1909–2008), Institute of Art History “G. Oprescu”, 9th of December 2010 (Virginia Barbu), p. 154

L’espace de la modernité roumaine 1906–1947, exposition organisée par l’Ordre des Architectes de Roumanie, Musée du Paysan Roumain, 27 octobre – 12 décembre 2010 (Magda Cârneci), p. 157

VIE SCIENTIFIQUE 

Le photographe Lee Miller à Braşov et Bucarest, 25 février – 1 mars 2011 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 159

Carol Popp de Szathmari - en Fotopionjar I Kungl. Bibliotekets Samlingar, Institut Culturel Roumain de Stockholm, 4 avril 2011 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 161

Documentation aux Archives Lee Miller de Farley Farm House, Chiddingly, East Sussex, Grande Bretagne, 14–22 mai 2011 (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 164

COMPTES RENDUS

CORINA POPA, IOANA IANCOVESCU, Mânăstirea Hurezi (Tereza Sinigalia), p. 167

Le bon timonier. La vénération de l’hiérarque Saint-Nicolas dans le monde chrétien (Constantin I.Ciobanu), p. 167

VASILE FLOREA, Theodor Aman (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 169 

MARIAN ŢUŢUI, Ada-Kaleh sau Orientul scufundat (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 172

MARK BRYANT, Napoleonic Wars in Cartoons (Adrian-Silvan Ionescu), p. 175

CARMEN CECILIA SOLOMONEA, Voroneţ, Popăuţi, Probota şi Moldoviţa. Metode tehnice ale picturii murale (Tereza Sinigalia), p. 178 

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